


When the Nut Cracked

by greerwatson



Category: The Charioteer - Mary Renault
Genre: Backstory, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-31
Updated: 2012-10-31
Packaged: 2018-05-27 13:41:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6286870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greerwatson/pseuds/greerwatson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hazell confesses to his housemaster.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When the Nut Cracked

In the Christian faith, confession is a sacrament.  Confessing your sins cleanses mind and soul.  So, when Hazell burned, appalled, with more than the strokes of the cane on his arse, he bolted straight from Lanyon’s study to the housemaster’s and stammered it all out, incoherent with bewildered shame. 

If nothing else, Mr Jepson’s icy stare delivered an immediate antidote to passion.  (It surprised none of the boys that there was no Mrs Jeepers.)  The boy spoke of perversion; and the housemaster’s own ghosts haunted the gaps between the stammered words.  The groove of his frown deepened dauntingly, and his nostrils pinched against the foulest of stenches.

The last broken phrase fell into silence.

“I may have misunderstood you,” said Mr Jepson with measured self-control.  “To what _exactly_ are you confessing?”

There was a sepulchral chill in his tone; and Hazell shuddered.  He had thought to find relief in self-betrayal; but he had not emptied himself of sin in the eyes of his confessor. 

The housemaster saw the boy’s repulsion, and suffered a revelation.  After all, Hazell had come to him of his own accord:  that was significant.  He paused, and took stock of a new situation.  “Lanyon has taken considerable interest in you this term,” he said thoughtfully.  “I’ve noticed it.  I dare say others have, too.”

Haunted by memories of Lanyon’s ‘interest’, Hazell stood dumb.

“Would you say,” said Mr Jepson delicately, “that he has ... ‘taken you up’...after the fashion of older boys with younger ones?”

“I suppose so,” Hazell stammered.  Lanyon _was_ older than himself, certainly.

The housemaster nodded.  The unspoken secret of the public school, he thought.  A practice he abhorred, that he had striven to prevent here, in his House.  With not a little shame, he realized that he had failed—most egregiously he had failed—in his custodianship of the pupils in his charge.  Moreover, he had been betrayed in his trust of a youth whom he, as much as Hazell, had considered admirable. 

“One thing led to another,” he said gently to the boy in front of him.

Hazell thought of Lanyon’s hand, touching his arm; of fingers stroking his thigh, then shifting ... up.

“He wanted,” he stammered, “he said—”

“Yes,” mused the housemaster.  “Yes, I’m sure he did.”  His eyes shifted to the window, past the branches of the oak and into memory.  “They always do, don’t they?”

“He acted as though I was his friend.  You know?”

The housemaster nodded absently.

“I know I’m younger ... well, not _that_ much younger ... but he’s ahead of me, and a prefect, and now Head Boy; but he never let that make any difference in the way he treated me.”

“You were special,” Mr Jepson murmured.  “He made you feel ... privileged.”

“Until today,” Hazell said, still bewildered by the change.  “Suddenly,” he said, desperate for the housemaster to understand the horror, “ _suddenly_ , he came over the prefect with me.  There was a ... a _gleam_ in his eye, as he got out his cane and told me he was going to flog me.  And then he said to bend over, and he ....”

He gulped, face twisted at the rest of the memory; and Mr Jepson’s heart bled.

“He _enjoyed_ it,” the boy said, with a sob of passion.  “You could tell.  He enjoyed it.   He _wanted_ to cane me.” 

There was betrayed certainty in his voice; and Mr Jepson nodded.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the 2012 Spooky Challenge on the [maryrenaultfics](http://maryrenaulfics.livejournal.com) LiveJournal community to the prompt “I’ll haunt you”.


End file.
